Hello Good Goldenagers,

Here's a quick weekly check-in. Since last week I've finished the first round of layout passes on the lands chapters, so now they all have consistent openings, overviews, maps, environment and event tables, and transport options, as well as shopping spreads.









I've also re-laid out and restored the sections describing the languages and humans in the rules appendage to the first adventure skeleton (summons unexpected).




Now, on the question of:

Again, I'm not going to be drawn on a precise and compleat timeline, because it's not entirely in my hands. However, I'm tracking the time it takes me to finish the layouts and such, and I've been broadly right in my estimate that I average around 4–5 pages per work day.

So, since the last update, that's roughly the first 80 pages of the book laid out, plus the green and yellow lands (another 40 pages), and about 25 more pages in between for the rest of the lands (out of roughly 80 total pages there).

That means we're about 55 pages or 3 weeks out from having all the pages, from i to 200, laid out.

When's that? 4th of December?

And then I want to lay out the remaining ~45 pages for the appendix, leaving 10 fallow pages to spread around for incidental art, indexes, and such like. We'll see.

By then we'll be in a good place to talk proofs / prints / production.

Ok, that's it for this week.

Cheers from Seoul,
Luka

Good goldenagers,

I'm back from my holiday. It was nice to see old friends and families after a couple of years, and also nice to drop back into taking care of two young humans. I have to say, two weeks of sleeping the whole night was quite amazing. Truly, a good sleep is underrated. I also realized that considering how much there is to do here, at home, I've actually done quite a lot over the last year. More than I feared.

Still, between jet lag and acclimation, it took me a while to get into both a work and a communication groove. I know some of you are justifiably curious when the second book will be finished. So am I, so am I. Who's the guy I can ask about that? Bad joke.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to work my way backwards from roughly page 180 to page 80, applying the final layout to the four lands and leaving gaps for the spot art.



That will leave me with roughly 220 pages of book and 30 pages left over for the various appendices, glossaries, indices and other bonus bits. Enough to send it over to the editor and get rolling on that front.

Ok, but when?

I'm loath to pin myself down publicly on this, but I have a date in mind—a date I've shared with Exalted Funeral. It's going to be crunch time over the next several weeks getting things done. We went over it with my wife, extended the child care for the Eggy and negotiated a few stretches of time over the weekends to finish things. Part of this crunch mode is that I'll be making more frequent but more barebones updates here. Fewer pretty screenshots, more short updates.

After all, we've got a window of—hopefully—stability on the tariffs front and since I only get paid once we wrap this project, well, my goal is to get done sooner than later.

Ok, but when?

Repeating the question doesn't get it answered faster. And, come on, I don't want to jinx it and get a bad cold or something between now and then. Let me distract you with some pretty spreads.



And yes, I even inserted some of the spot art already.



Some more pretty locations can't hurt, right? Time to insert the city maps, too. Fortunately I've already done those.



Yes, you may notice I'm working backwards on the land chapters, from Green (pages 215 to 235 roughly), past Yellow (190 to 215 roughly), into Orange.



There, I hope that sounds and looks good.

Ok, but when?

Hah. I hope an update not too far from now will answer that.

Take care,
—Luka
crunchy in Seoul

Autumn-clad goldenagers,

The last few weeks have been in the sign of the Circle Sea Grand Map. Yes, this is one of those updates that is weirdly technical.

The main part of Our Golden Age is traveling around a big, decaying world by plane (well, domesticated airwhale or blimper), train (the terrifying golem atom-train, perhaps), or automogolem (or bicycle, I guess). This part of the world, this Garden dominated by dreaming mechanical gods, is modern-ish and it needs maps that look the part.

My aim all along has been to replicate some of that vibe of a 1930s to 1970s National Geographic map, but the maps went through a number of permutations along the way.

Initially I thought I would do it all with vectors, making a map something like this:



I also experimented with a pixel art version.



Which looked ice, but drawing the symbols by hand wasn't really cutting it. Also, I really wanted those elevation effects.



The problem I had with this version was that the relief was really not quite doing what I wanted. By this time I was using Adobe Illustrator for the labels, Procreate for the painted terrain, and Adobe Photoshop for the relief. But Adobe Photoshop has removed lighting effects which allowed you to give the impression of relief from a greyscale layer.



So, as I came back to the map to finish all the lands ... I wanted to fix that hack. Instead of using an emboss on every layer, which made a huge, slow, and clumsy file, I wanted a proper lighting. And I found it. In Affinity Photo (well, Affinity Photo 2). So now we're up to four different apps for making this map.



Now, with that done, I needed some borders. And I already had the borders, right? Right. But they were in Adobe Illustrator, and even with gradient effects, they didn't quite cut it. They look too sharp for the slightly worn out NatGeo vibe I wanted.



Do you know how borders in maps used to be made? By hand. So I made the executive decision to ... remake them by hand. That took some time.



I think it was a worthwhile upgrade. I'm also slightly tweaking the colors of the labels, so they're not pure black, but have a hint of color, helping a bit with figuring out what they're for. Finally, you may notice that I've adjusted the symbols as I worked on the map. Initially, I made a map font, but it turned out to be too hard to make a multi-color font that would work with Illustrator, so it's just handmade symbols.

Some of the symbols, like the gates (above the SEZ), ports, etc. - still need to revise those. And make them smaller.

Now, why oh why did I need to do all this now?



This is why. This was my plan, to pack each of the lands in a spread like this. But I had planned without paying the piper.



I tried to layout the Blue Land, and it doesn't fit! Oh no! Also - my plan to just plop a jpg or png into indesign ... wouldn't play too nicely with the print, would it? No, it wouldn't. So ... I decided to export the labels as a PDF, which would preserve the pretty vectors and make the print file a bit sharper, while exporting the terrain as an image and sticking it beneath.

Oh, and how did I mask it? Handmade mask layers in the illustrator file. Trust me, this process is mad.



I now have every one of the six lands emphasised in layers for each of the six regional chapters, plus the map for the surrounding territories as I will require them and all the layers and everything else.

And some of the lands, some of them are big (the Red Land, I'm looking at you), so it's going to be a spread. But I don't want the reader to lose information in the middle, so it's two pages with overlapping art and labels.

That said, there is one more map layer I'm still planning to revise - the roads and transportation layer. I'm also going to do it by hand, and I need to test the visibility of roads and railways and sea routes to make sure it works properly with all the other stuff. The good thing is, because of how I've set up the files, I just have to export the terrain layers and the print file rebuilds itself semi-auto-magically.

I'm also going through the book (and the UVG) to try and make sure that most of the mentioned places also find themselves somewhere on the map. It's a task.

But, I hope, a task you appreciate:



Once the book and the board are done and laid out, I plan to share the source files for the map with all the backers, so you can make your own zoomed-in locations for games, or adapt it as you see fit.

That's it for this update. I thought I'd have more layout of the book done, but it was just cartography all the way down to the elephants and the turtles. Wild, wild stuff.

Now, I'm taking a two week holiday to visit family and friends in Europe after many years, so the next update will probably be in late October.

Take care and enjoy the Grand Map of the Circle Sea!

Luka,
of an Autumn Day,
Switzerland

Most delightful goldenagers,

A pleasure to meet you in typing once again for this latest update.

A number of you have asked after my health, so I'll handle that first. My hand's slowly getting better. More slowly than I'd like, since the little ones generally have little respect for the commandment "thou shalt not use thine wrist", but the brace is helping. I've also acquired a smaller, if more sweat-provoking, brace that lets me type without straining my wrist. I'll see the doctor next week to get a more, ahem, expert review of the situation.

On to Our Golden Age.











Finally, a surprise late-in-the-era update to the Vastlands Guidebook!



There's a few other background things, more spot art, tables, layout ... but those aren't so pretty yet. I hope to have the whole second chapter of OGA ready for you in the next update. Fingers crossed.

Till then, if you haven't yet, be welcome at the stratometaship: https://discord.gg/gpMD4TPkPq (100-use link, check later post or message if it's out). We had cookies, but they grew legs and walked away.

Ok. Keep this short, keep this sweat.

I'll be back shortly!
—Luka